Articles labeled: supreme court

In a 5-4 decision sure to spin Bill O’Reilly’s underwear into knots, the Supreme Court today ruled that child rape was not a capital offense.

“The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion. His four liberal colleagues joined him, while the four more conservative justices dissented.

There has not been an execution in the United States for a crime that did not also involve the death of the victim in 44 years.

Patrick Kennedy, 43, was sentenced to death for the rape of his 8-year-old stepdaughter in Louisiana. He is one of two people in the United States, both in Louisiana, who have been condemned to death for a rape that was not also accompanied by a killing.

The Supreme Court banned executions for rape in 1977 in a case in which the victim was an adult woman.

We would have thought the ruling would be unanimous, but whatever.

The court, in a 7-2 decision, brushed aside concerns that the law could apply to mainstream movies that depict adolescent sex, classic literature or innocent e-mails that describe pictures of grandchildren.

The ruling upheld part of a 2003 law that also prohibits possession of child porn. It replaced an earlier law against child pornography that the court struck down as unconstitutional.

The law sets a five-year mandatory prison term for promoting, or pandering, child porn. It does not require that someone actually possess child pornography. Opponents have said the law could apply to movies like “Traffic” or “Titanic” that depict adolescent sex.

No, “boy killer” doesn’t mean an adult that killed a boy. Rather, more shockingly, it refers to a 12-year-old who brutally murdered both of his grandparents with a shotgun 7 years ago. Christopher Pittman, now 19, was sentenced to 30 years in prison and had appealed his conviction all the way to the Supreme Court, who have denied it.

The justices, without comment, refused to intervene. At issue was whether the state properly used its discretion to try Pittman as an adult, whether the sentence was excessive, and whether mitigating factors should apply.

Outside a death-penalty context, the high court has offered little recent guidance on how to treat underage defendants.

Pittman’s lawyers argued no other inmate in the United States is serving so severe a sentence for a crime committed at such an early age.

The inmate’s legal team, from the University of Texas Law School, expressed disappointment at the high court’s refusal to accept the case.

Michele Deitch, an attorney and adjunct professor, speculated the justices may “have recognized a growing national trend against sentencing young children to harsh mandatory terms in prison, and wants to give state legislatures the opportunity to correct this problem before it rules on the issue.”

The Supreme Court is reviewing the case of Patrick Kennedy, a Louisiana man sentenced to death for raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter. Kennedy’s lawyer argues that executing him violates the 8th Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Do you agree? While people like Kennedy are indeed the scum of the earth, should we as a society really dole out capital punishment for cases other than murder? Of course, we’re a bit hypocritical because if he did this to our kid we wouldn’t need the death penalty as we would kill him with our own bare hands…

While the law that will guide the court’s decision is modern, the justices’ inspiration reaches back beyond the Bible. The concept of “an eye for an eye” was written in Exodus and, before that, by the ancient Babylonian ruler Hammurabi. Accordingly, the justices will have to decide whether Kennedy’s sentence is “proportionate” to his crime.

For four decades, absent such high crimes against the nation as treason, American law has mostly drawn a line when it comes to the death penalty: Only death warranted death. Any lesser crime, even rape, invited a lesser punishment.

Now the justices may be poised to rewrite that rule, potentially opening a series of questions about what other offenses merit the ultimate, irrevocable penalty, and perhaps inviting states to broaden the class of residents on Death Row.

On a side note, besides the abhorrent notion that judges would use the Bible as “inspiration” for their rulings, we thought Jesus denounced that whole “eye for an eye” thing in the New Testament. You know, the whole “turn the other cheek” stuff?

The Supreme Court made the right decision, in my opinion, when they offered to allow a 12 year old boy, who’s parents went to court over a dispute about circumcision (the case started when he was 4). The father, who converted to Judaism, wanted to force the boy to get circumcised while the mother did not.

All this money and time and resources wasted over a decision that is RIGHTFULLY the boy’s to make anyway. Why the parents would not respect the boy enough to ask, is beyond me. Let this boy’s voice be heard and hopefully, his decision will not be swayed by the self interests of his parents.

This is not a newborn, but a boy who is almost a teenager. Nobody should force a child, beyond newborn, to mutilate their body via circumcision against their will.

PORTLAND — The Oregon Supreme Court says the wishes of a 12-year-old boy must be determined in a dispute between his divorced parents over whether he should be circumcised.

The father, who lives in Olympia, converted to Judaism in 2004 and wants the boy to be circumcised as part of the faith, saying the decision is best left to the custodial parent. Lower courts sided with the father.

The mother, who lives in Oregon, appealed to the high court, asking for custody and saying the operation could harm her son physically and psychologically.